Donna's road to Success

you are doing amazing things. in reference to the quick flips mentioned at the end of your post - i know that here very few people can get a loan. they may be prequalified and after months of working with their lender, they still can't get the loan. i talked to my mortgage broker on Tuesday and she told me they get just a few calls right now. my son-in-law in OK has very little to do and he does residential and commercial loans. it's a tough market out there, but we do have those L/O's to help us and our buyers out. i know it's all coming together for you!

thank you for your insight.

thank you for your insight.

Dan and I are staying very busy. we have 3 properties under contract? It always happens where we have more than one going at the same time! hahahah!! This time we will be smarter.
The first one is a flip 5 bed 2 bath nice large lot that needs at least 20k we have it under contract for 75k ARV is 160k. should be a money maker as long as we can sell it fairly quickly. The second one is a buy and hold. The property has 2 houses on it, a 3 bed 2 bath and a 1/1. It should cash flow but has a lot of work to be done. We have to do our home work and inspect it well. The 3rd is a short sale so it will that a few months and the nice think is it is truly the ugliest house on the block!
I will let you all know how things proceed.
Our management company is now generating a little cash flow and in June we pick up 40 more units and we will triple on cash flow! I am loving it!
Have a nice week!

Hello Donna
I finish school this week and I will call you next week
Later Fred

Oh my gosh I can't believe it has been a month since I have posted anything! Well, just so you know we haven't stopped! Far from it. We have closed on our last 2 properties The 5 bedroom hous We will call Haussler,was a crazy deal. We had private money lined up. We were going to get 75k but the day before closing he backed out. Crapola! We have 1000.00 EM on the table and we were NOt going to lose it. So Dan and I started making calls. within a few hours our business partners uncle agreed to loan us the money. He agreed to loan us 75k for the purchase and another 30k for the rehab.the agreement is for 6 months no payment until we sell the house. We will split the profits 50/50. We will have 105k into and we will market it at 145k - 160k.
More tomorrow. Sweet Dreams everyone.

i've been wondering about you. sounds like you are "doing it". congrats on being creative and doing what you had to do.

Yes we are very creative. maybe that would be a good badge? hey?
We have been very busy for sure. We have picked up another management acct of 42 units it will cash flow about 2k a month. And pay for itself in 6 months. This is great for my PM company.
One of the other deal I spoke about a few entry ago has closed! Yipee! It is the 1/2 acre with 2 houses on it. We purchased it with private money nothing down 10% interest only pymts for 5 years, our purchase price was 65k. We will put about 5 k into the houses to get them rent ready. our PITI will be about 650 a month and the property will generat 1250 a month.It is a 1100sqft 3 bedroom house and 600sqft 1 bedroom 1 bath house. So cash flow will be approx 600 a month can't complain about that.
The deal was so sweet because our agent said "there is no way (our private money guy) will finance at 100% he never does that." And he agreed on the spot! I don't know but this may be the deal of the month!
We are doing it! And we both love it.

it has been a few months since I posted anything. Time just speeds right on by.
We are still investing out here on the west coast. We have gotten a little off track latily but We are ready to get back on the rihgt trail. hahaha!!!

Summer has come and gone and we have been busy. We have 2 grand kids and we got some camping time in and 2 family reunions and oh boy have we been busy.
Our RE investing is still goin on but we haven't been as aggressive as we had been a years ago. At this point we are not sure what our plan is...as always all advice is appreciated.
We did make a major change this summer. Somethinag I didn't ever think we would do. Here is the story.
Usually every Friday Dan and I meet with our realtor buddy and discuss what is new on the market, trends and general brainstorming. Well on special day in July we were viewing houses and one was a little different. I had heard of the house a few years back, from a co-worker who had told me that we should buy this house and tear it down it that it was falling apart. Well he was partily right. The house was the uglest house I have every seen!!! A big huge green monster!!! there was garbage and moldy broken down funiture all over the driveway and in the house. The house and everthing in it and around it was filthy and stinky.. There were cobwebs hanging down almost touching the floor.. this is long but it is a great story .
Anyway, The house was in horrible shape to say the least. If I could post picutes I would. so the house was a 2 story home 3300 sqft. 5 bedrooms and 3 baths 2 fireplaces and 2 full kitchens, one on each level of course. Nothing had been repaired or cleaned for 15 years. the exterior of the house was falling apart the deck was rotten and most of it had literaly fallen to the ground. the siding was warped and faded. ugly I tell you!
The home sits on a 1/2 acrea and the structure takes up most of the space it has an attached 2 car garage, a 1000sqft coverd swimming pool area and atttached to that it has a 2 story, 1600sqft shop. all together there is over 5500sqft of structure. Oh and by the way the garage and the pool area were stuffed full of old growth lumber.....
As we were touring through this monster of a house, our realtor buddy kept saying "you 2 should move in here." you could live here and rehab this thing!!!" And that is just what we did!!!
I just can't believe it.
We have spent the last 2 months packing and moving from a home we had lived in for 27 years. Oh my goodness that was a lot of hard work.
We rented our other home right away and didn't have any lag time.
Most everyone thinks we are crazy and maybe we are. Tell me what you think? Here are the numbers the house is in an uppper middle class neighborhood. It is view property. Out our living, room dining room, and master bedroom we can see clearly Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier. the view is amazing. The homes in the are are all view properties and are all 2800sqft+. the deal was and estate it had been vacant for at least 3 years It had been on the market 2 days we made a full price offer at 100k. comps come in for ARV of 320k to 350k. Honestly the house needs 70-100k depending on what we do to it. But we have time to fix it up. This is diffenently our 401k We borrowed private money at 9%. no points, interest only for 3 years. nothing down only recording fees. We also bought the ajacent lot for 1/2 price from same estate. Owner carry contract for 5 years at 5%, year 2 6% and so on. We gave them enough to pay the back taxes. Not bad. but I still can't believe it.
We have lived in the house for 6 weeks now. It is livable and CLEAN. It is not perfect but it is fun working and dreaming and planning with my best friend.

My new picture has the house in the background.

We were going to borrow money from another private person to, pay off our existing private money lender an borrow an additional 50k for construction on the house we moved into. This the deal is tasting bad. I have to trust my gut. He is wanting to control were and want we spend the rehab money on. He is questioning all of our estimates. for example; I have an estimate for 5k for landscaping. He is questioning, saying we should just do that ourselves. He thinks our deck estimate "is way out of line". He thinks we should get a cheaper person to do it our we should do it. I have provided him with timelines. But it seems he wants total oversite. I'm not OK with that. We have a good solid private money loan in place now.
We will find a different way.
We had dinner Friday night with 1 of our private money lenders. Two of our notes are due. We negotiated a 12 month extention. which will cost us 3 pts ($500.00 per point) and we keep the same 9% rate. This works out well since our last flip house is still on the market.
We picked up 2 more management acct this week! Yeah, 100 units will pay for our payroll without any addtional revenue. We are currently at 68 units.
One of our flips closed last week we grossed a 16,000.00 profit! I really took a long time to flip. 9 months, crazy! it was the only 3/2 in the area for the price everything else close to it was a 2/1! Looking back at it I think its draw back was that because it did not have a garage. At least it sold and we paid back our private money lenders. We had 2 on this deal. Now to do it again.
It is difficult seperation our 2 businesses, New Spring Equities is our real estate business but we have 2 partners of which neither of them do anything with real estate. That leaves Dan and I to handle all of the investing. And we have our personal business.... confusing huh. the problem is anything we do in the company stays in the company and none of it goes to pay off our personal debt.

lets see what tomorrow brings

a long day at the hospital today.. Feet are tired.
I ordered a couple of Deans books I haven't read. I hope they get here soon I need some brain feed.
our deal for some rehab money fell through but thats OK We will keep searching. We plan on asking the pm lender holding the first for some additional funds.
Rental signs are out ads running, and we mailed out 50 post cards. I will be putting out signs again soon.

Housing prices are still going down here. We have one rehab in progress and of course all of oeur rental houses to maintain. Husband gets too overwhelmed with that sometimes. He is not wanting to take ina another flip right now.
I just got Deans lastest book and am anxious to read it. We need the boost right now.I am hoping to come up with a new stratigy soon.

Have a nice day everyone.

Housing prices are still going down here. We have one rehab in progress and of course all of oeur rental houses to maintain. Husband gets too overwhelmed with that sometimes. He is not wanting to take ina another flip right now.
I just got Deans lastest book and am anxious to read it. We need the boost right now.I am hoping to come up with a new stratigy soon.

Have a nice day everyone.

You are amazing, girl! what you are accomplishing is awesome. i think the house you moved into sounds fun and exciting. way to take on a challenge. glad that PML didn't work out since he wanted to control you and everything else. i have a friend who got really turned off by that and got out of investing. smart move on your part. i moved back to OK a month ago so i'm starting all over again. i will get it right!! you are setting such a good example for all of us on here. thanks and keep it going. you are creative and you will figure out what you need to do.

Thank you Linda, I appreciate you words. You are very kind. This business takes a lot of time and I wish I had more to give.
I just got Deans newest book. I love the brain feed I plan on focusing on this so that we can get out of our hole and then I can cut back on my JOB. The book so far is excellent it is TRULY a recipe!!! Thank you Dean. Our home project is going pretty well. We have the upstairs in very good condition now. There is still lots to do the remodel of the bathrooms and the kitchen. We have 2 more lights to install. It is so much cleaner I am very excited about that
I will up dating my journal as we proceed.
With rates as low as they are we are looking at refinancing to lock in a good rate. But for the last couple of years we have not been able to get any kind of loan. We were told that as an investor we can have 10 loans, and then only refi our primary residence. What we found out is that if you have a 1st and a 2nd loan on a house, the lending institution looks at that as 1 loan!!!! Yippe that means we have 8 loans instead of 10.But we have to live in the primary residence for 6 months. So now we are focusing on getting our rehab home in financable condition.

I have been working on the homework from Deans latest book.
So I have been collecting names for my buyers list. I haven't found anyone that can provide me with a list of cash buyers! However, since I am an agent, I have quarried the sells for the last 180 days. From the mls website I am able to obtain a lot of info such as tax records, and where it is an owner occ or not. this doesn't tell me cash but it does tell me who is investing, their address and where and what they are buying and of coarse the purchase price. I can get a pretty good idea. My county has 365 in the past 180 days. I am on page 3 and already have 20+ names. I am starting to find trend with certain buyers. I like that
So for me time is an issue. I have identified some time to use so this pass Saturday morning 0500 I worked on my buyers list for 2.5 hours. I am finding that I can spend 1-2 hours when I get off work and a little time in the am when I get up.but in the morning I have more distractions and obligations. I have also started working on all of this on my breaks at work that totals to about another 1.1/2 hours a day. tonight I will work on my buyer letter.
I Have my yellow signs 18x24!!!!! so I am ready there
My agent keeps telling me he is willing to do whatever I want. I will have to push him I think. We will see when I ask him to start making offers again. Just a little note on my progress

i see you are working on a schedule too. since moving over a month ago, it's been hard to get in the swing of things. then i started a new job a couple weeks ago and that threw everything off. finally i have started working a schedule and i feel like i'm accomplishing so much. i'm not at the point of working on my lunch hour yet, but i probably will be in a couple weeks or so. it's amazing the time we can find if we just look for it. i hope you will post pictures of your rehab as you go along. that would be really neat. you have such a creative mind!

Here it is 1230 my time an I am still up!
Thank you Linda for you encouragement. How do you post pictures here??? It is funny ow you can find some time and then I feel guilty when I waste time too1 hahahha! I start think Boy I could have done this....... But I think you have to take a break once and a while too. How is your new job?

this is the little of my work week and rarily get much done. I have worked on my letter yet But I know I will have at least 3 hours Thursday.
We had out private money people come to our house "the green monster in the back ground" thye financed it. I was so nervous. But they were please with our progress. Thank Goodness. they came you to sign and extention on our other deal the spray paint house Ohio, Our 2 year contract expires this month. They agreed to extend 6 month, no fees just the rate will increase to 10%. We have a lease option tenant in there and they should be closing in April. I do hope that happen sooner than later. We will be 80% more out of debt. We will make up to 60k plus we will get our last 10k back of rehab costs. We paid 120k put 40k into it and our purchase price with our tenant buyer is 220k, they gave 30k non refundable consideration money. If the appraisal come in low we will have to adjust our price. So wish us luck please. this has the potential to be a homerun! I love the creative stuff

I have my final draft of my letter completed. I will mail letters out Monday. Wish me luck

i wish you all the luck in the world, although i don't think you need it!

the job is going fine. it's interesting, at least.

Yesterday one of our LO tenants, the Ohio property, call me and requested I open title!!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!!This is a big one to us. My husband says don't get too excited but WOOHOO!!!!!!!! I know I the deal isn't done until papers are sign but for heaven sakes, all of our personal debt with the excepting on our mortgages, will be paid off. I will be able to go part time again. More time for RE.
We also have a interesting deal in the works. Our last flip is on the market we have had 2 offers.But both of those fell through this offer is 55k cash and a house worth 100k. We will be looking at the house Monday. could be a good deal will we make abour 20k.

Dan and I went to a Christmas party last night. I found 2 buyers for my buyer list SWEET!
always talk about RE to anyone who will listen

I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season. It is nice to spend some quality time with friends and family.
I got my first call from my "30 days Cash" letters, I have 2 probable LO tenants form signs on Friday And We are ready to go!
Merry Christmas

I'm looking forward to this new year! Dan and I wil be really investing again. I have been telling him so a while that we need to do wholesaling but he wouldn't commit because he had to much to do...So I started the process by myself.But suprizingly, I have finally convinced him His brother has been working for him doing the repairs and maintenance for our company and Dan is ready to have him take over. That is excellent! We will be working together as a team again and that means we will succeed. We have had 2 meeting over the past week, planning and brain storming. He is going to read deans book 30 days quick cash. We will "find our obstacles and call them out! Unsheath the sword, and do battle with whatever it is that holds us back!" thank you Matt larson for that line.
We have 2 deals in the works from MLS offers.
Buyers list; I only got one phone call from my letters. but I will keep monitoring the buyers of sold properties. No reponses from my craiglist ads for investors. We did find some more private money yesterday!!! at a New Years Eve Party. Dan and I have consolidated notes and phone calls info to get a better picture of what we have. We hae a pln and that is awesome.
Ghost ads going in the papers Tuesday.

Well back to the JOB for me today and I walk in and think to myself, I have got to get out of here how much longer!!?? It has been productive so far we pick upa managemnwet acct yesterday and got another referral today! I made 2 offer last week first on is bank owner 3/1 needs 3k in repairs. FMV is 95K I have it under contract for 51K. Cash buyer is lined up We will meet with him later this week 1K assignment fee! This one will be a little unusual since it is a bank owned property. #2 is a duplex 3/1 and a 1/1 we have it under contract for40k ARv is 110k it needs 20k in repairs I have e potential buyers for itM This is where I get scared because my buyers list is too small. Have. Ten day inspection period and I am in the beginning of my work week at my JOB! Ahhggg 30 days to cash. Look out!

First Assignment of 2012!
I have been making offers on properties using Matts 25:1 strategy. This one was bank owned. It is a 3 bedroom 1 bath approximately.It had been listed 87 days. I believe it was listed for 69900 I offered 45k. FMV of the house is 95k. So we countered back a few times and agreed upon 50k and my buyer agreed to a 1k. So i is a win-win situation.
This is the third house that I have assigned to this buyer.
The house is in a strong rental area and will rent for 800/mo. The house needs approximately 3-5k to get it "rent ready" My buyer thinks it will take him 1-2 months to complete. and then my property management company will manage the property for him at 10% at equals 80/mo! I am please about that.

way to go, girl! i'm just getting back into REI. between working tough hours and being sick alot, i got way behind, but i'm chomping at the bit now. like the new pic too.

I am sorry to hear you have been ill. I hope all is well now. I have been busy too.
I haven't been posting much.Just seem to run out of time. So far this year we have done one assignment and we purchased a duplex with PM. It was a pretty good deal. It is a 3/1 and a 1/1 ARV is 110k we purchased for 40k and 25k in rehab and our PM finaced the whole thing at 10% until it is occupied then the rate will change to 9%. rents will be about 1100/mo. It is really ugly right now. Rehab has started and we plan to be finished in 60days.
.

that sounds great. isn't it neat to take ugly to pretty? i may be doing that before too long. i start calling contractors tomorrow to get a team put together. should be interesting. i'm working on the private money thing too, hoping to get some ideas on how to handle that and get it started. it would be really nice to have that. do you ever post pics of your rehabs?